JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH, 2013

Vol. 17, No. 3, 295–322, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2012.752163

American Fair Expositions Revisited:

Morocco’s Acrobatic Performers
between the Industry of
Entertainment and the Violence of
Racial Display

Lhoussain Simour

When and why did Moroccan acrobats intervene in the American entertainment
show business? Who were these subjects and how did they negotiate their
collective identities and individual agencies within the exhibition apparatus?
This article discusses the early experience of Moroccan acrobats in American
amusement industry and raises issues pertaining to representing cultural
otherness through acrobatic performances incorporated in various American
entertainment sites of the time. International expositions and various specta-
cle arenas associated with leisure activities developed discourses on ethnologi-
cal living exhibits that were reinforced by Orientalist images, which stemmed
from a history including the fascination with the exotic and sensual Other. I
argue that Moroccan–American artistic encounters through acrobatic perfor-
mances, which could roughly be located in the first decades of the nineteenth
century, are cultural and discursive terrains about identity and difference
where modes of representation about Self and Other are negotiated in dialec-
tical ways. My major assumption is that the alternative routes of travel taken
by noncanonical voices to the West, namely to America, need to be retracked,
documented, translated, and circulated. These voices reorder the archives of
history and fill up vacant spaces that official discourses have overlooked. I
shed light on the historical context of Moroccan acrobats’ journeys to
America; then I reflect on how the economy of pleasure fostered and
legitimized discourses of racial violence on the displayed subjects in various
performances.
Keywords Moroccan acrobats; Oriental fantasies; Orientalism; fair exhibits;
racial display; cultural hegemony; cultural fascination and curiosity.

The merits of this contribution are derived both from the insightful comments I have received from
Professor Khalid Bekkaoui who suggested writing about the experience of Acrobats in America for
my PhD dissertation and from the meticulous remarks of the peer reviewers and editors of the
Journal for Cultural Research. Its shortcomings are entirely my responsibility.

Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis

296 SIMOUR

Although few Moroccans went to America during the earlier years of its history,
Moroccan presence in the USA was generally limited until the last decades of
the nineteenth century. Given the geographical proximity and access to
Europe, it was historically more common for Moroccans to immigrate across
the Straits of Gibraltar than it was for them to travel to America. Most Moroc-
cans who went to America through different historical periods, particularly
during the heyday of world fair expositions held in various States, made a
deliberate choice to be part of the American “melting pot” society. Taking
daring journeys across the Atlantic offered Moroccans a distinctive view about
American culture and civilization. They learnt English, adopted American life-
styles, wedded American women, and established themselves as a vital popula-
tion of the country while remaining loyal to their culture, language, and
habits.
By the late nineteenth century, as most literary and cultural critics argue,
Americans had relatively limited experience with the Orient. The memory of
the Barabary captivity wars, the popularization of travelogues, and the circula-
tion of the Arabian Nights were influential enough in likening the Orient with
romance, mystery, and barbarism. Furthermore, Moroccan encounters with
America were not solely diplomatic and exclusively commercial as mainstream
historiographical writings would tell us. In fact, Moroccan artistic performances
on various theatrical stages and venues were another interesting facet of the
cultural encounters with America. These were complex enough in developing
Orientalist discourses in American social and political imagination. With the
rise of fair expositions, Orientalist iconography soon became one of the major
traits of American businessmen and entertaining agents who mobilized the
esthetics of Orientalism to encourage entertainment, leisure, and pleasure. As
a matter of fact, Fair exhibitions in the nineteenth century were part of a
worldwide movement among the industrializing countries of the west. They
developed into intricate systems of cultural production and of representation
whereby scenarios about exhibited subjects and cultures generated symbolic
imageries (Çelik & Kinney 1990, p. 34). In other words, they were powerful
institutional expressions which revealed complex social and cultural growth
while acting as display platforms as to how America and European countries
viewed themselves in comparison with other countries at specific historical
junctures.1
In his Orientalism, Edward Said fails to consider how nineteenth century and
early twentieth-century America witnessed a dramatic fascination with the Ori-

1. See http://www.worldexhibition.org/worldexpo/1876-philadelphia/ for a list of some Fair Expo-

sitions held in America and which witnessed the participation of Moroccan troupes of acrobats:
Crystal Palace Exposition, New York City (1853); Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia (1876);
World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893); Midwinter International Exposition, San Francisco
(1894); Mississippi International Exposition, Nebraska (1898); Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo
(1901); Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis-Missouri (1904); Louis and Clark Centennial Exposi-
tion, Portland-Oregon (1905); Jamestown Centennial Exposition, Hampton Roads-Virginia (1907);
Alaska-Yukon Exposition, Seattle (1909); and Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francesco (1915).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 297

ent through International fair expositions, and how these were emblematic
enough in both shaping the nineteenth century American views of the Orient
and in giving Orientalist tropes and images about Otherness factual legitimacy
and durability. While the British and French inscriptions of Orientalist discourse
in Saidian analysis are narrowly defined as academic and intellectual disci-
plines, the transcriptions of American Orientalism, however, find their ample
expression in the fairgrounds of the Victorian era. From this perspective and
from the historical context of fair expositions, I will approach the Moroccan
acrobatic experience in America looking at how the World’s Fairs developed
discourses on ethnological living exhibits to Orientalize Otherness and conceive
of “Bedouin” performers and performances as the ethnic facade of nineteenth-
century American entertainment industry. I will also attempt to reflect on how
American orientalist ideas and practices became visible through the display of
living exhibits in international fairs and aided in shaping popular imagination
about the cultural geography of the Orient.

Capitalizing on Human Rarities: Curiosity Shows of “Bedouin Arabs” on

American Ethnic Stage

The lineage of most Moroccan acrobats who appeared in American entertain-

ment industry could be traced back to the legacy of the marabout of the
Oulad Sidi Ahmad O Moussa in the Southern part of the country. The followers
of this mystic brotherhood introduced by Sidi Ahmad O Moussa al-Jazouli who
appeared in Southern Morocco in the mid-Sixteenth century were bound
together by strict loyal ties to their spiritual founder and followed his mystic
doctrine, his religious preaching, and his social rules. They rejected the peas-
antry mode of life and led a nomadic lifestyle, moving from village to another
while developing an acrobatic tradition that was geared mainly towards earn-
ing a living and satisfying their needs for travel, discovery, and encounter with
local populations. The divine power they had received from their Saint trans-
formed their itineraries from experts in therapeutic healings of humans
afflicted with physiological, mental, or behavioral anomalies, into dexterous
and energetic performers in the arts of acrobatics, extending their skills
beyond national borders to become indispensible novelties and exotic rarities
for audiences on theatrical stages in America, Europe, and Australia. These
Moroccan acrobats were consistently praised in American newspaper reviews
for their spectacles that showed physical strength and skills, vigorous pyramid
building and somersaults, superb elasticity, and dexterity. Their performance,
as was reported, “cannot be compared to any act with which the American
public is familiar because it is utterly unlike anything ever before seen in this
country” (Figure 1).2

2. “Children of the Desert: Remarkable Troupe of Genuine Sahara Arabs with Ringling Bros. Show”,
Frankfort Roundabout (9 September 1989, p. 5).
298 SIMOUR

Moroccan Acrobats appeared for the first time in America in the 1820s.
According to Anton Escher in an article entitled “les Acrobates Marocains dans
les Cirques Allemands” [Moroccan Acrobats in German Circuses], early Moroc-
can acrobats from the Oulad Sidi Ahmed ou Moussa brotherhood who appeared
in Germany in the first decades of the nineteenth century had already made
alternative routes to America. He states that:

Today we are almost sure that these troupes [of Moroccan acrobats], even
before their arrival in Germany, had already made a detour to America. For
ample justification, just pay attention to the narrative of this former acrobat
from Tangier whose great grandfather immigrated to the United States around
1820. It was within a troupe of acrobats that his great grandfather made his
debut at the Circus]. (Escher, 1997)3

Escher refers to the “Bedouin Arabs, a Circus Act” announcement dating back
to 1883 to provide evidence that the American audiences who were seeking new
sensations and attractions were already familiar with and fascinated by Moroc-
can troupes of tumblers and human pyramid builders. In fact, various American
newspapers offer evidence about the appearance of Moroccan gymnasts and cir-
cus performers in the first decades of nineteenth century. For example, in 1885,
The Sun brought an announcement about the appearance of a troupe of nine
acrobats in the Koster & Bial’s theater hall. These acrobats were unquestionably
Moroccans who had been performing in the country “for nearly a quarter of a
century”. They were famous for their unique acrobatic performances that relied
on human pyramid building and summersaults. It is quite likely that this piece is
also referring to Hadj Nassar’s troupe. The description goes like this:

Nine bronzed Bedouins sprang nimbly on the stage of Koster & Bial’s concert hall
last night and threw thrilling back somersaults over a row of glistening bayonets
that were firmly fixed in the stage. Then they tossed knives with dazzling intre-
pidity, spun elongated Arabian guns until the spectators got dizzy, and finally
eight of them climbed up and hang on to the ninth Arab, who walked around
with as much ease under the tremendous load as if he were merely carrying a
Japanese umbrella. After that the Bedouin who is loaded with the name of Nus-
sar Hassan tumbled all over a high wire without breaking his neck, and all the
troupe went home, took off their blue gold-embroidered trousers and red
embroidered shirts, and sat down and played Arabian poker over Arabian check-
erboards with United States quarters and bits of ivory that looked like American
collar buttons with brass heads. The company is the first troupe of Arabs that
have appeared in America for nearly a quarter of a century. Two Bedouin
women, wives of two of the jugglers, travel with the troupe.4

Of the earliest Acrobats to have performed in America, the Billboard (29

November 1947) discusses and refers to the appearance of a traveling troupe
of Moroccan acrobats in America around 1847. Viz Ushgaiyer and Haji Omar

3. The translation from French is mine unless stated elsewhere.

4. The Sun (Wednesday, 14 January 1885).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 299

Figure 1 The Oulad Hmad O Moussa Acrobats performing in a local market around
1912.

Netamo travelled with the first troupe, “their meanderings carried them
mostly through New York State where they exhibited their talents on street
corners and in town squares” (Pape 1947, p. 72). These were known as “band
of gypsies” which featured musicians, horsemen, and jugglers who performed
to the delight of an American audience that was enthralled by the Moroccans’
novel exercises of dexterity and acrobatic agility. Ushgaiyer’s troupe spent
two months in the country but their sojourn soon ended up in a riff with the
manager of the Astor Hotel who declined to provide lodgings for “the color-
fully garbed, ferocious looking entertainers” (Ibid.). Instantly, Ushgaier

ordered a frenzied, three minute impromptu performance in the lobby of the

famous hotel. When the screams of the frightened, bewildered guests reached
a crescendo, Ushgaiyer offered a husky laugh, gathered his bearded, long-
haired tribesmen together and marched them out of the hotel and to the docks
where he immediately booked passage for his homeland. (Ibid.)

The group departed to Morocco and Ushgaiyer, Netamo, and some of the
troupe members joined the Moroccan army and were killed during the Span-
ish–Morocco war (1859-1860). The article also states that Ushgaiyer “never
failed to boast about a command performance which he cheerfully rendered to
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, a gala celebration whereat the prince
claimed the title of Prince Consort … a historical event” (Ibid.).
The acrobatic performances of Morocco Arab performers in America are an
aspect of Moroccan professional entertainments in the industrial centers of the
nineteenth century. The rise of ethnic exhibition was marked by the almost
eclipsed Moroccan artistic experiences of travel to and curiosity about the
west. Acrobatic troupes travelled to America in the early decades of the
300 SIMOUR

nineteenth century to entertain American audiences with their performances

and their local forms of acrobatic liveliness. These were highly desired to sat-
isfy the audience’s quest for authenticity, exoticism, and ethnic pleasure.
Moroccan jugglers and tumblers, horse riders, and gun spinners provided their
entertainments in various amusement sites such as Midway plaisance and Moor-
ish Palace or Moroccan and Algerian villages that were managed and animated
by Hassan Ben Ali and Sheik Hadj Tahar, both of Moroccan origins and both
famous as impresarios in American show business.
Moroccan acrobatic encounters with America are part and parcel of the
visual culture of ethnic exhibition in the nineteenth century. Moroccan
acrobats and artists embarked on daring journeys to America in the context of
collecting nonwestern cultures, exhibiting Oriental native arts and saving non-
western histories and identities. Little is known about their journeys and lives
beyond borders except scattered evidence in American newspapers of the
time. Hence, it is important to recollect those archives and read them in the
light of their historical, cultural, and discursive implications.
American Newspapers and entertainment business magazines offer fragmen-
tary narratives and announcements about the encounter of Moroccan mass
entertainment with America’s. The Skaneateles New York Democrat (1857)
refers to the presence of two Bedouin Arabs, probably Moroccans, who
appeared as acrobats within an exhibition troupe and who got married to
American wives and settled there. It states:

We know of two Bedouin Arabs, part of an exhibition troupe that came to this
country several years ago, who married wives and are rearing offspring in one
of the Hudson river counties. Siam has its representatives here in the famous
twins, and is one of the up-town streets a wealthy native of Morocco domicili-
ates with a Westchester county spouse.5

The New York Times dated 5 September 1863 talks about the “excitement
caused by the most wonderful success of the great and unrivaled company of
Bedouin Arabs, 12 in number, who have created the greatest excitement”6 in
America and in different European cities as the “same success attended them
in London, where they appeared frequently before Queen Victoria and the
Royal Family”.7 These 12 Bedouin Arabs were famous and curious Oriental
acrobats for circus audiences and theater goers of that time. They were listed
in various newspapers for their novel acrobatic displays as curiosity shows.
They headed theatrical programs and made unparalleled success for several
weeks at the Circus-Broadway Amphitheater; they were advertised to have
performed with unparalleled brilliancy as well. The New York Daily Tribune
refers to this group in the “Amusements” column as:

5. “Remarkable Marriages”, Skaneateles NY Democrat (1857).

6. The New York Times (5 September 1863, p. 7).
7. The New York Daily Tribune (Friday, 4 September 1863, p. 7).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 301

the unapproachable troupe of real Bedouin Arabs and the grandest array of star
riders and acrobats ever brought together in America at the Broadway Amphi-
theater whose extraordinary performances, having been received during the
last six nights with Tumultuous plaudits, have been reengaged for few nights
longer.8

Whether these newspapers used the catchphrase “Bedouin Arabs” to refer to

Middle Eastern troupes, especially Syrians, or to North Africans, namely Moroc-
cans, were not clear in the beginning. Yet, in the course of my research and
quite unexpectedly I found the names of these 12 acrobats listed in another
newspaper. Billed as the “Original and Genuine Troupe of performing Bedouin
Arabs”, the full list of these acrobats appeared in the Schenectady NY Evening
of 1864. What is particular about this document is that it does not only involve
names typically used by Moroccans such as Hadj Brahim, Ben Caddour, Assou,
Bensaid, and Abdi Hassan; but it also evokes their acrobatic uniqueness which
includes human pyramid building. This artistic act was mostly created, devel-
oped, and promoted by Moroccan troupes to become characteristic of Moroc-
can acrobatic performances of the time. The list involves each acrobat’s
activity within the troupe; for example: Mahomet,the Emperor of Vaulters,
Hash Braham Benemow, challenger of the Desert, Hash Assou, pyramid Base.
The American tradition of exhibiting indigenous people from North Africa
and various parts of the world in parks, museums, and circuses reached its
popularity in the last decades of nineteenth century. Such practice was mainly
undertaken to provide audiences with entertainment venues, scientific study
and grant “aesthetic contemplation” as well. These exhibits, as Coco Fusco
argues, “were a critical component of a burgeoning mass culture whose devel-
opment coincided with the growth of urban centers and populations, European
colonialism, and American expansionism” (Fusco 1994, p. 148).
Rising at a time when mass audiences in Europe and America were hardly
aware of the rest of the world, the displays turned into a vital form of public
“education.” They were venues of entertainment for the masses and also reli-
able sources for scientific data for early anthropological endeavors. Through
shows and spectacles, the “whites” started intercultural contacts with non-
Western others. The displays aided so much in fostering and perpetuating
images about nonwhite peoples and their cultures. They also served as immedi-
ate and performative archetypes of the concept of the noble savage central to
Enlightenment philosophy. Ethnological displays of other races – which were
arranged and coordinated by impresarios but authorized and legitimized by
anthropologists – confirmed popular racial stereotypes and endorsed domestic
and foreign policies. They gave authority and legitimacy to white supremacist
worldviews by representing nonwhite peoples and cultures as being in need of
discipline, civilization, and industry (Figure 2).
These Fair Exhibits were carefully ordered to articulate relations of power
and reveal “a desire to enhance supremacy through representation” (Çelik &

8. The New York Daily Tribune (8 February 1864, p. 7).

302 SIMOUR

Kinney 1990, p. 38). They also “set the patterns of national representation and
provided the channels of cultural expression through which the knowledge
produced by the expositions would be fashioned” (p. 36). Such knowledge
became materially evident and discursively powerful through the incorporation
of the idea of colonial villages and tent shows in various exposition settings.
Nonwhite human attractions, oddities, novelties and artifacts, entertainers,
and spectacles were all displayed for the delight of American audiences that
were offered glimpses of an exotic Orient. These non-Western rarities were
emblematic enough to the cultural enterprise and served hegemonic functions
through processes that reduced the Other(s) “to the status of “specimens” in a
racist ethnological schema” (Adams 1996, p. 35). The reconstruction of the
Orientals in late nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural discourses, signifi-
cantly traceable through fair exhibits and expositions organized in America,
reinforced popular racial beliefs that reiterate the notion of “Othering” within
an Orientalist praxis discussed in Saidian model of analysis as the West’s crea-
tion of a cohesive identity for itself in opposition to an overall encompassing
narrative of a passive, sensual, barbarous, and strange East (Said 1978, pp.
240-249). Redefining Otherness through racial displays provided “objective”
terrains for scientific analysis and anthropological undertakings of the Other’s
cultural signifiers, lives, and manners.
Whirling dervishes, Aissawas, and dancing acrobats, labeled as “living curios-
ities” made their appearances in Philadelphia International Exposition, 1876, in
Chicago during the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and in St. Louis’s fair exhibit

Figure 2 Moorish entertainers, donkey riders and dancing women at the Midway
Plaisance, Chicago World’s Fair 1893.
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 303

of 1904. These fairs were vivaciously populated with North African indigenous
artifacts and people and offered the fair-goers the opportunity to embark on
thought-provoking journeys about the mysterious “Orient” and its cultures.
Curiosity shows about exotic performers were meant to be interchangeably
representative of a broader racial Otherness whereby curiousness for the Arab
Muslim race remained strikingly unmistakable. These were elaborate and indis-
pensible mediums of cultural production and systems of representation which
generated easily consumable imageries about the Arab world. Being on stage
or in street squares where performances would often take place, the stereo-
type about Otherness acquires authenticity, validity, durability as it “gathers
strength for a seemingly inexhaustible cycle of repetition and regeneration”
(Çelik & Kinney 1990, p. 35).
The nineteenth-century spectacles of various expositions displayed objects
and people and mobilized an arsenal of images to convey ideas about American
expansionism. Newspaper announcements for instance offered practical entries
into imperial truths: “Real Wild Moorish Caravan”, “Bedouin Arabs at the hip-
podrome”, “Barbaric Splendour”, “Berbers from the Desert are here”, “Daring
Sheiks and Fearless Horsemen”, and “Invaded by the Riffian Moors”. These
catchphrases were influential in fueling a nascent curiosity about North Afri-
cans and provided stereotypical illustrations of ‘tribe’ and ‘race’ to gratify
America’s expansionist desire. The idea of building national identity at this
stage had already “become standard fare at expositions. Fair organizers, often
in the guise of anthropologists, attempted to present indigenous people in sup-
posedly authentic settings, creating the impression of savagery, barbarity, and
exoticism that titillated fairgoers” (Munro 2010, p. 81).
The archeological and ethnographic recreations incorporated in different
expositions and fair exhibits enhanced the centrality of racial representation
to construct and reconstruct an American national identity. Exhibitions were
carefully designed to produce an “abject world” where relations of power are
revealed and where racial desires to reinforce the supremacy of Whiteness are
reinforced. International expositions held in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Saint Louis, Buffalo, San Francesco, San Diego, between 1876 and 1916,
promoted diversity and heterogeneity through ideological refashioning of fair
exhibits to create symbolic universes that would promote the country’s hierar-
chical orders of racial and cultural classifications within the traditional domi-
nant discourses of Self and Other, the West and nonWest, the East and the
rest. They contributed in the circulation and popularization of evolutionary
ideas about race; but above all, they offered the “American Victorians” the
opportunity to affirm their collective national identity while discovering the
world through ethnic categorizations and racial supremacy.
What is also mostly striking about the various amusement outlets concerned
with “Eastern” spectacles in various leisure sites is how they successfully played
on the “Bedouin-ness” of Arab acrobats. These presented Arab performers as
“Bedouin horsemen” acting out their villainous masculine heroism. In fact, the
“Bedouin-ness” associated with North African and Middle Eastern acrobats in
304 SIMOUR

different entertainment magazines and newspapers was meant to be a specta-

cular slogan for the revival of Oriental romantic images suggestive of exoticism
and primitiveness. The term “Bedouin” was often deployed in entertainment
newspapers to refer not only to the nomadic pastoralist way of life of Arab per-
formers; but also and most significantly, to an ethnic identity grounded in heri-
tage and culture (Cole 2003, p. 237). It was used to commodify the image of
the Other and enhance stereotypical discourses in amusement industry and in
the popular production of knowledge. The circulation of such etiquettes for the
masses would activate the whole repertoire of Orientalist images inherent in
perceptions about Otherness and exaggerate cultural difference.
Said’s conception of the Orient provides a general understanding of the
dynamics behind the idea that “the East” is destined to be a subject of inter-
est in the Western knowledge. According to him, Orientalism operates within a
binary logic. It is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemo-
logical distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and … ‘the Occident’” (p. 2).
This basic perception of the binary logic aided so much in the perpetuation of
fantasies and images through which the Western Self “gained in strength and
identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even
underground self” (p. 3). In his attempt to reread western humanism from the
perspective of the Oriental other, Said reduces the Oriental Other into a posi-
tion of total silence, as Aijaz Ahmed states, “the only voices we encounter in
the book are precisely those of the very Western canonicity, which Said
complains, has always silenced the Orient” (Aijaz 1992, pp. 172-173).
As stated earlier, nineteenth-century America was a cradle for the Oulad
Sidi Ahmad OMoussa Berber acrobats who enjoyed substantial notoriety in fair
exhibits, circuses, and theaters. Hundreds of them poured into American
popular entertainment. In August 1889 for instance, an article appeared in the
Daily Times, and talked with minute details about the arrival of a Moorish
Caravan from North Africa including real Bedouins, dancing girls, and many
other attractions. It states that

a genuine Wild Moorish Caravan with real Moors, Bedouins, Algerians, together
with their arms, horses, ornaments, domestic utensils, charming dancing girls,
high priests, slaves, Africans, etc. … will be one of many new features to be
seen with the monster new aggregation that Barnum & Bailey will exhibit here
on the 20th. The entertainment offered by this portion of the fifteen combined
shows exceeds in interest everything ever seen, and depicts the actual life of
the Semitic races from the cradle to the grave, their wanderings in the desert,
pilgrimages to the shrine of Mahomet at Mecca, life on the March, in camp,
warlike scenes, their amusements, including the graceful and ravishing move-
ments of the charming dancing girls, conveying at once the most entertaining
and instructive ideas concerning a race of people who exist the same today as
they did in the days of King Solomon, Besides the above there is a horse fair
with 880 heads of rare and pure breeds of horses, arranged in a separate tent
especially for inspection by the public.9

9. “A Wild Moorish Caravan”, Daily Times Watertows N.Y (13 August 1889).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 305

This passage is an intriguingly classic example about America’s general pre-

occupation with the Orient and its fascinating colors. Such Orientalist world-
view is articulated through stereotyped images of Oriental splendor, cruelty,
sensuality, and intense pleasure. The use of specific phrases, particularly
words such as Semitic races, shrine of Mahomet, race of people, king Solomon,
reinforces rather than contradicts the text’s underlying binary opposition
between a morally superior collective Self and an appealing but bizarre collec-
tive Other. This illusion of Orient is further reinforced in the text by images of
“the charming dancing girls, conveying at once the most entertaining and
instructive ideas concerning a race of people”. These images of women
embody and reiterate Western fantasies about the Orient: women are por-
trayed as objects of desire – primarily as indolent and sexually available odal-
isques and/or as voluptuous and vulnerable concubines. Underneath, this
report presents a compelling portrait of a luminescent, rational West while
systematically sustaining a dark, pre-rational, exotic Orient to serve as the
“Other” of a superior Occidental culture and history.
Another underlying strategy that characterizes this extract is the reporter’s
tendency to constitute Oriental space as inherently unchanging and enjoying
abstract timelessness. It reveals a remarkable indication about the Orient
being static, without a concept of history, spaceless with total absence of time
as a continuing condition. As the reporter sarcastically suggests that this Orien-
tal world is a world without change, a world of atemporal customs and rituals,
untouched by the historical processes that afflicted Western societies. Such
atemporal rituals and novel spectacles of bedouin performers in nineteenth
century offered an unprecedented space where America as an imperial idea
and its Otherness coalesced in material objects and living exhibits on display.
They furnished audiences with an array of imperialist vocabulary which trans-
mitted the very ideological messages of the essential rightness of imperialism
and aided in the campaign to make what William Appleman Williams called
“empire as a way of life” (Williams 1980).10 Newspapers and amusement maga-
zines rhetorically highlighted the authentic acts of agility and strength per-
formed by a “jumble of foreignness” that was instrumental in various popular
entertainment and leisure sites. This jumble of foreignness had much to reveal
about the ways in which objects and people were “incorporated in a more
general exoticizing aesthetic alive in public spectacles” (Armstrong 1992-1993,
p. 201) of the nineteenth-century America. At the heart of these spectacles is
the construction of Oriental circus entertainers, men and women, be they
acrobats, dancers, tumblers, jugglers, or snake charmers as objects of display;
as “symbolic types” (Carmeli 1994, p. 177) epitomizing the nineteenth-century
relations with and meanings of exoticism and oriental fantasy. Such embodi-
ment had its unique significance and attraction on the audiences, on the new

10. Adopting a revisionist stance towards history, Empire as a Way of Life probes the roots and sur-
veys the development of American imperialism and territorial expansion. The book offers interest-
ing accounts on the destruction of the first Americans, the Open Door Diplomacy spirit that
governed American economy, and the pursuit of imperial desires in different parts of the world.
306 SIMOUR

forms of representation circulated whereby the spectacles of the subliming

exotic and oriental others began to acquire significant necessity in promoting
the hegemony of American civilization.
Moroccan dwarfs and giants, as human oddities, were recurrently displayed
in different amusement parks as authentic backdrops of the curious, novel and
picturesque “Orient”. The New York Daily Tribune of 1891 offered a meticu-
lous description of Moroccan dwarf Acrobats. It states that “in Sus […] the
dwarfs are called Aglimen, and their offshoots are rather a small race with a
light red complexion, a tribe of acrobats called “the tribe of our lord Hamed,
the son of Mosses” [Oulad Sidi Ahmed O Moussa] … These acrobats from Mor-
occo, who are smiths and tinkers … are represented on the monuments of the
Fourth Dynasty as performing in Egypt”.11
Little Tio-Tio Benja, the 24-year-old Riffian dwarf with the Moroccan circus
show, for example, was one of the rarities that performed “the most cart-
wheels imaginable” and created “furor” with the hippodrome audiences.12
Two Moroccan dwarfs were hired by Emma Francis, famous for her whirlwind
acrobatic dances around the1900s, and appeared regularly with her on the
Orpheum stage (Figure 3). A theater announcement in the Ogden Morning
Examiner states that:

The two little Arabian boys who are with her are bright little chaps. The elder
of the two is named Abashia ben Hadj and is a native of Suce, Africa. The
other was born in Tangiers and called Sie Mohomed. His nickname is “Wag-
eunm”, which means Wagon wheel, and was bestowed upon him in Germany
for his wonderful facility in turning those rapid fire somersaults called cart-
wheels. Before being brought to this country by Hassen Ben Ali, the famous
Arabian acrobat, he used to peddle bread on the streets of Tangiers.

The physical attributes of the dwarfs, as Morocco’s freaks, stirred visual and
discursive images through which the turn of the century American audiences
viewed and understood other races. The “dwarfs of Morocco” who appeared in
various Moroccan troupes of Acrobats across the country were viewed both as
types or categories that completed the overall décor of the strange and the
bizarre, and as a deviation from the standard or “variation from the norm”
that further reinforced the mysterious and the exotic in various curiosity-shows
(Figure 4).
Mohamed Agraham was another rarity among the Moroccan Bedouin acrobats
who attracted audiences for his robust stature, massiveness, and physical
strength. Agraham was among the “Eight Bedouin Arabs-whirlwind acrobats”
who appeared in various theatrical stages in the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth century and was famous for being the “statuesque leader” of

11. “The Dwarfs of the Atlas: their possible relation to the Mystics of the ancient Greece”, in New
York Daily Tribune (20 September 1891).
12. New York Daily Tribune (Sunday, 10 March 1907, p. 6).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 307

Figure 3 Emma Francis and her Arabs, Desert Evening News, Saturday, 2 April 1910.

the troupe. He suddenly died of an unidentified disease in Los Angeles; and his
story came out in the Los Angeles Herald around 1906:

No one who saw the exhibition given by those eight Arabs will ever forget the
strong man of the troupe, for he was about the strongest strong man that –
was ever seen on the vaudeville stage. He carried the whole seven of his fel-
lows on his shoulders and seemed sorry that there were not a dozen or so more
308 SIMOUR

Figure 4 Bedouin Arab dwarf, New York Daily Tribune, Sunday, 14 April 1907.

of them. He whirled about the stage, dervish fashion, yelling his delight in wild
cries and the louder he yelled the faster he whirled and the faster he whirled
the wilder he yelled … Mohammed Agraham was the greatest of them all. He
was a magnificent specimen of manhood at its physical best. If anyone had
suggested that in six months he would be dead he would have laughed himself
sick!13

This passage creates ideas of the “exotic native subject” as part of

permanent images of racial difference in popular exhibitions and in theatrical

13. “Disease Kills Arab Giant”, in Los Angeles Herald (Friday, 30 March 1906, p. 6).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 309

performances. The “giant” Agraham is an exceptional picturesque figure that

became the major fascination and appeal to audiences in nearly all major cit-
ies of America. His natural “giantess” served to promote the exotic and appeal
to the spectators’ voyeuristic gaze at and interest in the culturally mysterious
Other. Such emphasis helped to construct and support “the status quo con-
cerning Western racial hierarchies, consistently relying on negative representa-
tions of nonwhites to draw crowds” (Springhall 2008, p. 39). This view sheds
light on the corporate capitalist mode of entertainment industry in American
exhibits and theatrical performances. It is a new economy of pleasure that
commodifies and capitalizes on human oddities and various modalities of freak-
iness to promote racist ideologies.
The participation of such giant performers in American entertainment spaces
echoes the focus on bodily disorders to generate the pleasures of gazing at
anomalous difference to enthrall more audiences into the shows. These specta-
cular performances play on racial attributes as markers of difference and turn
anomalies into immediate sites of pleasure, ethnic violence, and cultural
excitement. This advertising strategy highlights the universal aspect of amuse-
ment industry in American fair exhibits and makes use of ethnic diversity and
racial variety to prove the greatness of human civilization, while confirming
the power of America as a nation where human differences resonate with the
attractions from distant lands and remote curiosities (Figure 5).
The “freaks” as a category, however, did not rely on Moroccan dwarfs and
giants to lure audiences into the mysteriousness of Otherness, but it included
snake charmers, body-torturing performers belonging to the Aissawa tribes as
well. Hadj Soliman Ben Aissa, for example, was one of the greatest curiosities
within this category who exhibited his powers of endurance and thrilled Ameri-
can audiences with startling exhibitions. A descriptive account of his breath-
taking shows appeared in both Elmira Daily Gazette and Free Press and the
New York Daily Tribune dated 1893. The reporter confirmed that:

after sprinkling powder over some burning embers and inhaling the fumes, he
went through a violent dance throwing his head backward and forward with
wild rapidity. Having announced that he was insensible to pain, long needles
were run through the muscles of each arm, his cheeks and throat. The Arab
did not wince in the slightest even when a dagger was run about three inches
into his abdomen. This exhibition was far too sickening for many of the
select audience. The fakir went on to pierce his tongue with another thick
needle and draw out his left eye with a dagger. Some half dozen vipers were
then allowed to bite his hand and the audience were further shocked by see-
ing him hold his bare arm over a fire till the limb looked black and
scorched.14

14. See Elmira Daily Gazette and Free Pres (9 October 1893, p. 2) and New York Daily Tribune (8
October 1893, p. 15).
310 SIMOUR

Figure 5 Moroccan acrobats in pyramid building with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Buffalo
Bill Museum and Grave, 1901.

In some other newspapers such The Oswego Daily Palladium, Soliman Ben
Aissa was mistaken for an Indian fakir who performed audacious spectacles and
remarkable entertainments that “created so much excitement that the author-
ities have refused to permit him to exhibit in public”.15 Such practices are

15. The Oswego Daily Palladium (28 April 1892).

 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 311

deeply rooted within the Aissawa confraternity, a religious brotherhood of a

mystical order founded by Muhammad Ben Aı̈ssâ in the fifteenth century, best
known as the Chaykh Al-Kâmil, and whose tariqa (the way, or practice) has
been perpetuated until the present day Morocco. As the legend runs, according
to an article in the New York Evening Post, republished by the Rochester
Democrat Chronicle, 1896, Mohamed Ben Aissa lived a holy life near Meknes,
Morocco, but provoked one of the Sultans by his increasing influence. He and
his disciples were driven out of the country into exile; “sustenance failed them
on the way, and when his hungry followers asked for food, the saint bade them
eat poison, if they could find nothing else, and himself set about searching
among the stones for scorpions and serpents, which they devoured without
harm”.16
Besides their mystical origins, the followers of this Tariqa are best known
for their insensibility to pain and resistance to physical harm. They perform
inconceivable wonders such as putting red-hot irons in their mouths, eating
glass, thrusting swords through their bodies, eating scorpions and others poi-
sonous reptiles. The Aissawas’ performances and those of other “freakish” cat-
egories exhibited in World fairs and other entertainment sites around America
stimulated popular racial images. Underneath the facades of enjoyment,
amusement, and leisure, the racial prejudices which filtered through fair
exhibits were mainly evident. Sources of entertainment such as the Wild West
Show, Circuses, hippodromes, and other sites of curiosities were mostly
authoritative in fostering and perpetuating ideas about white supremacy and
racial beliefs. They demonstrated how ideas about race and culture were fed
into the American imagination for popular consumption; and how the diversity
of racial types exhibited invited audiences to evaluate the different groups of
nonwhites within evolutionary hierarchies of racial scales, and to affirm
America’s cultural prowess and racial hegemony (Figure 6).
What is also exceptional about these acrobats and their performances is that
they assert to have been descendants of a Saint, as stated earlier. Their com-
plex beginnings could be tracked back to the Zawiya of Sidi Ahmed O Moussa,
a Moroccan religious, social, and cultural order in the Southern parts of Mor-
occo. Though they came from a Sufist background, they acted as secular trav-
elers who complicate western anthropological discourses about Moroccan
Zawayas. Their performances beyond borders transform the Zawiya from a reli-
gious and a historical space of spiritual structures and mystic forces into a
more secular form of entertainment. Nevertheless, what needs to be empha-
sized is how these entertainers conceive of travel as a spiritual transgression
of borders towards new experiences, discovery, knowledge of and fascination
by the country they visited. For example, Hadj Nassar who appeared in the
United States Naturalization indexes of 1791-1992 as a Moroccan gymnast born
in December 1844 in Demnat, naturalized on 16 February 1874 and resided
permanently at 111 Bleecker Street, new York City together with another

16. “An Algerian Aissaoua”, in Rochester Democrat Chronicle (2 February 1896, p. 8).
312 SIMOUR

Figure 6 Moroccan snake charmer at the Moroccan village, Chicago Century of

Progress exposition 1933, Library of Congress Prints and Photos.

Moroccan gymnast, Naturalized William Hassan, wrote a wonderful poem in

Berber language, translated and published by The New York Clipper (1914).
The same source states that Hadj Nassar went on trips through India, Russia,
and Europe, and was famous in Morocco for being “the living encyclopaedia”
of his times until he died in Tangier in 1914. His poem remains indicative of
the Acrobats’ nomadic spirit engulfed within a sufist/religious mode of expres-
sion. It sheds light on the Moroccan acrobats’ permanent pursuit of curious,
unrestrained and rich experiences beyond cultural and national borders. It
reads as follows:
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 313

Original text
Ketkh kultoo doonit siarakh kulioo-esnghar.

Egaikh-ellahi taghamoot illarsack esworakh.

Keehhd Marican ecftwa saleheen

Ayaran Sukwk khdoonit Ijarb New York

Igoot geess Lehawa ula sho urssr ijla yen

English translation

Of the world I have been all over.

By the order of Allah, my chances and luck guided

round,

To American best of all the land

Fun with myth of Joy fancied by liberty of thought.

New York, jolly fellows with clever jokes, there you are. (Ibid., p. 6)

This text offers glimpses of the poet’s view of America and celebrates a
Moroccan’s nomadic identity. It celebrates the satisfaction of a growing cul-
tural curiosity and a quest for the discovery of and interaction with novel
experiences. Travel in the case of Nassar becomes both the art of nomadism
and a nomadic expression of unbridled experiences enabled by excessive
mobility to discover the world. Nostalgic moments emerge abruptly from the
intricate textures of the poem to reveal real desires to recover the peasantry
mode of life in its unspoiled and pristine times enhanced by the choice of
words such as taghamoot,” “esnghar,” and “saleheen.” With depth of thought
and excellence of spirit, the poet’s weavings of these significant words within
the lyric couplets of the poem invoke rural imageries and religious references
that juxtapose the labyrinthine New York with pastoral Morocco. The use of
“Saleheen,” or at least reference to the magical power of saints, imbues the
poem with a Sufist mood. As Nassar himself was a descendent of the mystic
tribe of the Oulad Sidi Ahmad O Moussa whose followers are famous for their
nomadic lifestyles and for being blessed with sanctified divinity for acrobatic
agility, travel becomes in the poet’s case a purified spiritual journey towards
unknown destinations guided by the “saleheen’s” divine blessings (Figure 7).
These unknown destinations guided by mystic sanction have attracted other
acrobats to experience foreign spaces. In 1865, Haj Tahar and his troupe set
314 SIMOUR

Figure 7 Hadj Nassar’s Troupe of Moroccan Acrobats, Variety 1915, p. 5

foot upon American soil. They were the first acrobats to introduce Arabian
tumbling in American circuses, and according to Billy Pape, Tahar’s “perform-
ers soon suffered a nostalgic longing for the sands of Morocco. Virtually all his
troupe left him. He immediately sent to Morocco for a number of Arabian tum-
blers, for he visualized an array of tumbling and pyramid building never before
seen in this country” (Pape 1947, p. 72). Tahar insistently promoted his troupe
of “Bedouin Arabs, the Graceful Sons of the Desert” in The Brooklyn Daily
Eagle and in the New York Daily Tribune, and acquired national prominence in
different circuses and Vaudeville theaters especially after contracting with
Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West company in the 1890s. But before the 1890s,
Sheik Hadj Tahar Ben Mohamed made remarkable appearances at the Philadel-
phia Centennial international exposition in 1876. Tahar recalls his early
triumphs with his troop of Bedouin Arab acrobats:

I met a man named Van Amberg, who had a circus in America, and he told me
that people would be eager to see the Arab acrobats. None had ever visited
the United States. I came to the Centennial in 1876 with 75 acrobats, dancers
and horsemen. With me I brought the pretty Sultana, the dancer, and she
became famous. I met Van Amberg in Constantinople. Naturally, like all young
men, I was eager to make money. I selected picked men and taught them even
more than they already knew. (Doman 1928, p. 10A)
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 315

Audiences found much delight not only in Hadj Tahar’s Bedouin Arabs’
performances as novelties and exotic rarities, but also in his enigmatic and
thrilling stories which were widely reported and circulated in American
newspapers and entertainment magazines of the time. Consider, for exam-
ple, the following story which appeared in an American newspaper around
1890s and entitled A Valuable Relic: A Priceless Hair from the Great Maho-
met’s Beard:

A hair from the great Mahomet’s beard is now in New York. … The hair was
brought to this country by Hadji Tahar, a Moorish merchant in New York.
“There is but one other relic like it in the world,” said Hadji Tahar. “It is sung,
in Moslem song, and celebrated in history. I would part with my life rather
than lose this little case. I have made six trips to Morocco; I have often been
in deadly danger – shipwrecked twice and thrown among lepers and yellow-
fever patients.” “Once when I was wrecked In the Mediterranean I was one of
the few who survived. It was the talisman that saved me. I have been success-
ful in trade with its help. I am never without it.”

This divine blessing transmitted by the magical and magicianal powers of the
Talisman gives an idea about the spiritual muse that engulfs the tradition of
acrobatics in Morocco. The acquired (Baraka), in the sense of divine grace, or
the spiritual power of the Talisman stands as savior and protector as is the
case with Hadj Tahar during his quest for unrestrained experiences of travel
and discovery. This divine Baraka used to seek immediate help from divine
powers stands in Moroccan popular imagination as an amplified enhancement
of the inevitable limitations of human capabilities as it offers spiritual possibil-
ities to survive particular experiences, upheavals, misfortunes. or life in gen-
eral. The two fundamental psycho spiritual preconditions for such Baraka are
both a pure will, or sincere intention, and a total submission and attachment
to the Saint’s magical powers.
In Morocco, various terms may be used for a saint. He is referred to as wali,
siyyed (master), or as marabout; a French term, from the Arabic murabitun,
(tied to God). As a religious ideology, Sainthood or maraboutism asserts that
certain people, usually males, may have “a special relationship towards God
which makes [them] particularly well-suited to serve as … intermediar[ies]
with the supernatural” (Eickelman 1974, p. 220). Such sanctified people are
popularly viewed as bearers of a divine blessing which Westermarck defined as
“a wonder-working force of predominantly beneficial character” (Westermarck
1933, p. 87).
The divine powers inherited from the al wali a-salih (Saint) along with total
inclusiveness of and attachment to his divine blessings is also apparent in the
following passage about the sea trip of a troupe of Acrobats from Fez. The
New York Auburn News and Bulletin dated 28 April 1883 included an interest-
316 SIMOUR

ing narrative of 12 Moroccan Acrobats and their “dreariest voyage” across the
Atlantic from England to America.17 Hadj Hammady, one of the members of
the troupe, was interviewed in a hotel when he first arrived in America.

If you had only seen the storm we had all along,” remarked Hadj Hammady,
the most powerful athlete of the party; “we thought the steamer was going
down every moment. We hardly ate anything and do not feel very strong just
now. We made a vow to our saint, Sidi Ben Abbas, that if we reached land in
safety we would give him an offering in gold, so when we arrived here we took
some gold coins, tied them up in a cloth and threw them into the sea.”

“Why did you throw the money into the sea?” asked the reporter.

“Why, don’t you know the gold will find its way to the treasury of the saint
just the same as if we had put it there ourselves!” replied Hammady.

“Where is the saint’s tomb?”

“Near Fez. I said to the sea just as the Bedouin did after he had landed: “Oh,
you blue eye, if they plowed you. and sowed seeds on you, and the grass were
to grow all over you, I’ll never trust you again.’ I want to go back home
voverland.”18

Hadj Hammady’s story is not a mere fact about an individual narrative, nor
is it solely about his attachment to supernatural forces and divine blessings of
the Saint, it rather entails a process of fictionalizing otherness through various
strategies and mechanisms that are meant to produce imaginative geographies
in which West and nonWest are separated so that the identity of the Self could
be reaffirmed. This and many others need to be seen as part and parcel of a
larger historical episode “which has installed representation as the principal
construct of knowledge in Western culture [and whereby the Orient is]
objectified into a form of discourse … as well as into a stereotypical image for
consumption” (Bozdogan 1988, p. 38) which reduces “the actual complexity
and diversity of the Orient into a set of opposing concept pairs” (p. 39): the
West is rational, the East is emotional/spiritual; the West is dynamic, the East
is a static world of contemplation.
Within the same vein, the sea trip of a Moroccan “dervish” was also given
ample consideration by the New York Evening Telegram to stress the queer
mystical and supernatural habits of the oriental Other. In 1898, a troupe of
Moroccan acrobats from Tangiers were imported by Sheik Hadj Tahar to join
Buffalo Bill’s wild west shows and with them was Cheriff, a whirling dervish

17. Layachi El Habbouch, Moroccan PhD candidate working on the image of Britain in Moroccan
imagination. His major assumption is that Moroccan entertainment encounters with Britain began
within a complex context of ethnological exhibition and colonialism of the nineteenth century.
Such encounters took new historical and cultural significance when ethnic consciousness started to
emerge as a paradigmatic practice of identity and cultural mode of power.
18. “Some Homesick Arabs”, New York Auburn News and Bulletin 26, 540, p. 8 (28 April 1883).
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 317

whose queer acrobatic gyrations furnished much amusement to the passengers.

The report stated that:

A dervish always whirls round and round when he prays. This was Cheriff’s first
sea voyage and he insisted on whirling himself about the deck for two or three
hours every day praying to keep the sea smooth. It was very rough last Sunday
and Cheriff declared he knew that it must have been because he had inadver-
tently eaten some pork. He whirled four hours at a stretch that day and the
sea became smooth again, whereupon Cheriff said the passengers should be
very thankful to him, though the passengers were at a loss to tell which caused
worse qualms, the motion of the ship or Cheriff’s dizzy revolutions.19

From the onset, the first statement of the report gives an impressive collec-
tion of false images about the Other’s spiritual beliefs through the peculiar
association of acrobatics with praying. Such a distorted picture that gives a
reverse image of cultural realities is deployed to arouse much interest in the
Other’s remarkably curious religious practices with a clear intention of intensi-
fying religious and cultural prejudices. The report is also invitation to audi-
ences to experience the superstitious Other while enhancing its irrationality at
different levels. Such invitation intends to frame and freeze Otherness into a
set of beliefs which perpetuate an Orientalist discourse that configures differ-
ence as a fixed entity with novel and exotic characteristics to be explored and
consumed (Figure 8).
The presence of Moroccan performers in distant lands contests the inconsis-
tency of such inscriptions which stem from Orientalist beliefs that hamper cul-
tural understanding. Moroccan acrobats’ social, matrimonial, and
entertainment activities in America show genuine curiosity about and interest
in acquiring knowledge about and discovering the country and its people.
Moroccan troupes who visited America were enthralled by the country, learnt
the English language and wore Western clothes.
Moroccan performers, eager in fact to learn about their surroundings and
curious about technological developments, visited the Eagle Office to see how
the paper was put in press. Most of them were acrobats from Hadj Tahar’s
troupe. They were invited by the Brooklyn Eagle, where Tahar used to pro-
mote his entertainment activities. The “invading Riffian Moors” were struck by
and expressed great astonishment at what they found out; they were enthusi-
astically curious to learn about the paper machinery, the elevator, the tele-
phone, and other curious discoveries they made that day.

They, were put on the elevators and shot up to the eighth floor of the building,
expressing great astonishment at the mode of ascent. When they understood
that, it was water pressure that sent them flying up they were still more sur-
prised and looked about tor the fluid. They talked excitedly with one another
when they looked about in the composing room. One of their criticisms was

19. “Whirling Dervish Imported: His dizzy gyrations made Campania’s passengers feel qualms”, The
Evening Telegram-New York (Saturday, 19 March 1898, p. 8).
318 SIMOUR

Figure 8 The Famous Hassan Ben Ali’s troupe of Moroccan Acrobats, Amsterdam
Evening Recorder, Monday, 9 September 1912.

that it was strange to see the women working with the men. The vast amount
of type and the method of setting. It was very interesting to them, and when
some proofs were pulled from a galley of type they seized them eagerly.

The whirling dervish is a little fellow of very powerful frame. He is full of curi-
osity and very voluble. On learning that the roller of the proof press was of
solid iron ho straddled the press and tried to lift it he was heartily laughed at
when he failed.

In the bindery department the youngest and handsomest of the Arabs, who has
big brown eyes and curling black hair, fell a victim to the charms of a brunette
houri who operated a stitching machine. He would not talk English, but he
could look the language of love and he did.

“What do you think of them now?” the Hadj asked triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell
you that Christians are good people ?’” asked Hadj triumphantly.

“Oh, yes. Those are good people.” the Moors all said; “but they are not at all
like the other Christians. The Spaniards are bad, but the Americans are good.”

They went away after many salaams with Arm full of souvenirs. They were as
happy as children.
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 319

“You have more wonders in that one building than are to be seen in all our
country,” said chief, and he added: “Those boys will fill all the post office in
Morocco with the letters they will write to their people.” They all got safely
aboard the cars on their return journey, though the curiosity of the whirling
dervish nearly got him ran over by a trolley car.20

As the excerpt clearly reveals, it is obvious that the “Riffian Moors” wanted
to find out about the wonders that America could offer. They demonstrated
growing curiosity, quest for learning, and reflexive self-understanding. While
the text struggles to turn these Moroccan acrobats into objects of discovery;
into exotic “foreigners in flowing robes” who were the “most picturesque
group of visitors” to have shown up at the Eagle Office, they nonetheless
betray the textual rhetoric to shift into agents of discovery who were in quest
for the gratification of their curiosity.
The pattern of cultural of fascination with the west adds an interesting
dimension to the Moroccan acrobats’ experience in America. Unconstrained
curiosity of Western travelers as opposed to a fatal lack of curiosity of Muslim
travelers as something of a theme in Orientalist writings is totally undermined
by the Acrobats’ experience. Such experience denotes that these visitors from
Oriental lands have a long tradition of engaging in interactive ways with wes-
tern cultures. Their attitude towards “the infidels” was not by any means a
condescending one; they had a mutual respect for religious and cultural differ-
ence which went beyond the distorted images created by Orientalist writings.

Conclusion

Moroccan acrobatic encounters with America took place in the context of eth-
nic exhibition in world’s fairs during the last decades of nineteenth century.
Significant troupes of entertainers intervened massively in American entertain-
ment industry. Impresarios of renowned company such Barnum and Bailey,
Sells Bros., Buffalo Bill recruited a huge number of troupes to appear in differ-
ent shows across the country, and their experiences were widely covered by
different entertainment magazines and newspapers. These acrobats had their
own narratives, their own journeys, and their own biographies that contested
their inscription as mere ethnic objects used and abused by western narra-
tives. They were not exclusively performers engaged for the satisfaction of the
exotic delight of American audiences; but they were cultural bearers as well.
Their early encounters with America offered rich, intricate and varied intercul-
tural connection opportunities which led to the appearance of wonderful sto-
ries of acquiring knowledge about a different culture, of interracial marriages,
of curiosities about civilization, of constructive acculturation instances, and of
positive theatrical entertainment exchanges that provide historical evidence of

20. “Invaded by the Riffian Moors”, The Brooklyn Eagle (19 June 1894, p. 12).
320 SIMOUR

constant intercultural acrobatic skill-sharing between Moroccans and

Americans.
Serious research undertakings need to be done on the itineraries of Moroccan
acrobatics across geographies, nations, and cultures of the nineteenth century.
More efforts on archival work need to be invested to discover the intricate
beginnings of such experiences of travel and performance in their local and
national contexts. Archives of western newspapers, entertainment magazines,
and census and naturalization documents keep offering ample chances to shed
light on the complexity of discourses on Moroccan acrobatics in America.
Throughout this paper, my aim has been basically to analyze a set of forgotten
archives of Moroccan acrobats’ performances beyond borders in the light of
the rise of ethnic exhibition in American theaters and in fair grounds of inter-
national expositions. As little known experiences of oriental travel and curios-
ity, Moroccan acrobatic presence in America needs to be interpreted not
simply as artistic performance, but also and mainly as discursive practice of
cultural and racial affiliations associated with the rise of ethnic exhibition in
the industrial centers of the nineteenth century.
As living experiences, not only textual representations, Moroccan Acrobatic
entertainers had played a significant cultural role in creating and circulating
tropes of the exotic other engaged to perform ethnic pleasures, native iden-
tity, and oriental prowess for the delight of American audiences in the nine-
teenth century. In fact, these seem to have acquired ample discursive power
with the rise of Orientalist movement in visual arts and performances. The cir-
culation of photographs of Acrobats in various entertainment sites such as Mid-
way plaisances, Streets of Cairo, and Moorish theatrical venues complicates
further the American discourses on racial and ethnic difference. Hence, it
would be interesting to reconstruct connections between historical photogra-
phy of Oriental and Moroccan gymnasts and entertainers in western fair exhibi-
tions in general, and in American circus shows and theatrical spectacles in
particular.
What we discover with the experiences of Moroccan acrobats in various
American entertainment arenas is that the transatlantic routes and journeys
started from the Moroccan shores by Moroccan entertainers and many others in
earlier times of modern history is a valid category of historical analysis that
sheds light on the rethinking and questioning of the conventional definitions
associated with the Atlantic crossing. Movements across and around the Atlan-
tic are not deemed to be solely European and American but interestingly
Moroccan and North African in significant ways. The nineteenth-century “Atlan-
tic narrative” constructed by subjects who became “central figures in the
Atlantic drama” (Falola & Roberts 2008, p. xi) included Moroccans. Their
encounters and counteractions with the American Self and modernity was not
only emblematic in creating a crisscrossing network of transoceanic traffic but
played a central role in the shaping of the Atlantic world as a cosmopolitan
 AMERICAN FAIR EXPOSITIONS REVISITED 321

zone, as an interconnected zone of kaleidoscopic movements throughout his-

tory, and as a complex and heterogeneous realm of transcultural encounters.

Notes on contributor
Lhoussain Simour is affiliated to Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (Fez),
Morocco. His primary academic focus centers on cultural studies, colonial discourse
analysis, performance studies. He is currently working on the image of America in
Moroccan literature and has completed a PhD dissertation under the supervision of
Dr Khalid Bekkaoui titled: America through Moroccan Eyes. His publications
include: “The White Lady Travels: Narrating Fez and Spacing Colonial Authority in
Edith Wharton’s In Morocco”, in Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and
the Islamic World, Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2009. “Migration to Dreamland and the
Construction of postcolonial counter discourse”, in Middle East Journal of Culture
and Communication, Vol. 3, Issue 3. 2010. “The Sexually Enthralling Other:
Oriental Weddings in Performance and American Erotics of the Brown Threat,” The
Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, June 2012.

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Newspaper Archives

“A Wild Moorish Caravan,” (1889) The Daily Times Watertows N.Y, 13 Aug.
“The Dwarfs of the Atlas: their possible relation to the Mystics of the ancient Greece”,
(1891) New York Daily Tribune, 20 Sep.
‘Remarkable Marriages’, (1857) Skaneateles NY Democrat.
‘Some Homesick Arabs’, (1883) New York Auburn News and Bulletin, vol. 26, no. 540,
April 28.
The Oswego Daily Palladium (1892) 28 April.
Night of Prayer on the Theatre Roof: Kneeling Arabs observe the feast of Arafa, looking
over Central Park toward Mecca’, (1911) The New York Times, 2 Dec.
‘Deaths in Profession’, (1914) The New York Clipper, 28 Feb.
The New York Daily Tribune (1864) 8 Feb.
The New York Daily Tribune (1870) Friday, 11 Mar.
‘Disease Kills Arab Giant’, (1906) Los Angeles Herald, Friday, 30 Mar.
The New York Daily Tribune (1863) Friday, 4 Sep.
‘Invaded by the Riffian Moors’, (1894) The Brooklyn Eagle, 19 Jun., p. 12.
New York Daily Tribune (1893) 8 Oct.
Elmira Daily Gazette and Free Press (1893) 9 Oct.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1897) vol. 35, no. 305, Saturday, 26 Dec.
‘Whirling Dervish Imported: His dizzy gyrations made Campania’s passengers feel
qualms’, (1898) The Evening Telegram-New York, Saturday, 19 Mar.
The New York Times (1863) 5 Sep.
‘Children of the Desert: Remarkable Troupe of Genuine Sahara Arabs with Ringling Bros.
Show’, (1989) Frankfort Roundabout, 9 Sep.
New York Daily Tribune (1907) Sunday, 10 Mar.
‘Children of the Desert: A tribe of Genuine Sahara Arabs brought to this Country’,
(1893) The Omaha Daily Bee, Sunday, 28 May.
The Sun (1885) Wednesday, 14 Jan.
The Argus (1879) Jan.
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